The Jedis fought, the spies shagged, a witch attacked, and dead people
were seen. Summing up another eventful summer box office, the season began
as expected with enormous success for Star Wars
Episode I and Austin Powers : The Spy
Who Shagged Me, but ended with the surprising strength of The
Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense.
In customary fashion, total box office sales for the summer are expected
to hit another all-time high nearing $3 billion by the end of Labor Day
weekend. Higher ticket prices and new multiplexes that opened for business
certainly helped the overall gross skyrocket, but a steady stream of commercially
potent product kept moviegoers going back for more all summer long. Julia
Roberts turned a double play by starring in two blockbusters, Universal
turned its fortune around with a string of hits, and new filmmakers delivered
some of the summer's most profitable motion pictures.

Eleven releases crossed the $100M barrier and a twelfth (American
Pie) should join the club within weeks bringing the summer total
to a record twelve. By comparison, the last three summers each gave birth
to nine such blockbusters. However, three pictures should finish in the
$70-100M range compared to five from last summer. Universal and Artisan
have already found themselves new franchises with their hits The
Mummy and The Blair Witch Project.
The Brendan Fraser adventure film jumpstarted the summer season with a
huge $43.4M opening and held the number one spot for two weeks. Then The
Phantom Menace exploded taking the box office crown for three
consecutive frames before a series of nine films each opened at the top
one after the other. Finally in August, The Sixth
Sense claimed the top spot all month long and into the fall
season. "Trailers in front of Star Wars
at the beginning of summer really encouraged movie fans to come back over
and over again once they saw the exciting lineup of films making their
way to theaters," explained Chuck Viane, distribution president of
Buena Vista.

The summer of 1999 saw a small shift away from the usual plethora of
big-budget action pics. There were no Lethal Weapons,
no Die Hards, no killer comets, no
Arnold, no Bruckheimer films. Instead, some of the most successful pictures
were comedies. Normally only one or two summer comedies ever bring in over
$100M in ticket sales but this year saw five such funny hits with two crossing
$150M and another, Runaway Bride, approaching
that level. In fact, Austin Powers,
Big Daddy, and Bride
delivered three of the five biggest comedy openings in history. And scheduling
moves paid off for a number of films including Notting
Hill which moved up to May from later in the summer, The
Sixth Sense which was pushed up to August from the fall, and
The Thomas Crown Affair which was pushed
back to August from June to avoid the similarly-themed Entrapment
and The General's Daughter.

By a wide margin, George Lucas' highly-anticipated Star
Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace claimed the crown for the
summer box office and will finish as the highest-grossing film of the season,
and most likely of the year. With a projected final domestic gross of $427M,
the mighty prequel stands as the third biggest blockbuster ever behind
1997's Titanic and the original Star
Wars which took in $461M over the course of twenty years. Other
benchmarks Darth Maul and company set included the largest opening day
gross ($28.5M), second biggest opening weekend ($64.8M), best second weekend
gross ($51.4M during the Friday-to-Sunday portion of Memorial Day weekend),
and the fastest time to reach the $100M, $200M, and $300M levels. The
Phantom Menace also spent the summer crushing records across
the globe and should boost its jaw-dropping worldwide gross to over $750M
by the end of Labor Day weekend with ample room to surge ahead.

Of course Episode I didn't stop
there. The $115M-budgeted movie was busy bringing in cash from other revenue
streams as well including soundtrack sales, toys, books, as well as from
the numerous cross-promotions. But the Jedi saga's deepest impact was felt
on the summer release schedule. To avoid being lost in the Skywalker storm,
studios left May and June relatively empty offering only a few worthy competitors
to face the force while pushing back titles to the back half of summer
to hopefully find breathing room. This summer, only 14 pictures were launched
nationwide (800 or more theaters) in May-June compared to 20 the previous
year. Conversely, the July-August period saw 29 wide releases versus 25
in 1998. What that clear field in early summer did was allow Star
Wars to dominate screens and dollars but also allowed early
summer films like Notting Hill, the
Austin Powers sequel, Big
Daddy, and Tarzan to clean
up at the box office as moviegoers who had seen enough of Qui-Gon and pals
wanted something else to see.

Probably the biggest surprise of the summer came from a documentary-style
film, shot for about $60,000, but managed to capture over $130M from the
pockets of moviegoers across North America. The
Blair Witch Project stunned audiences at last winter's Sundance
Film Festival and Artisan Entertainment shrewdly swooped in and acquired
the distribution rights to the horror film for a reported $1.1M. In July,
a limited release prompted sell-outs from coast to coast which was followed
by a nationwide expansion that brought in a mammoth $29.2M in just 1,101
theaters. The success of The Blair Witch Project
was absolutely incredible and shocked every industry observer.
Moviegoers were entranced with how the film blurred the line between reality
and fiction and went in droves to see a movie unlike anything they had
seen before. And its addictive web site was credited with building a massive
following and subsequently pushing those fans into the seats of theaters
and could forever change the way studios look at the internet as a marketing
and sales tool to promote movies.

Artisan's distribution chief Steve Rothenberg reflected on the performance
of Blair Witch by noting that "it
was helped by an intense internet marketing campaign and the timing was
right as it came after years of gory horror films which people were getting
bored with." Rothenberg also credited the gradual release pattern
with some of the success since the long lines and sold out shows hammered
home the notion that this was a must-see event, especially for the under-25
crowd. Also benefitting from Blair Witch fever
was Artisan itself which established itself as a brand name supplier of
cutting edge independent fare. The marketing and distribution of The
Blair Witch Project this summer was universally praised. Jack
Foley, president of distribution for USA Films, stated "kudos to Artisan
for a phenomenal job with Blair Witch,
and the nerve to aggressively pick it up at Sundance in the first place."
Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, felt that Artisan
"did a masterful job" while Buena Vista's Viane simply stated
that "Artisan did THE marketing job of the summer with Blair
Witch."

Studio executives learned this summer just how lucrative a smile Julia
Roberts has. The megastar worked overtime with the two blockbuster romantic
comedies Notting Hill, which features
her romancing Hugh Grant to the tune of $117M, and Runaway
Bride which reunited the actress with Richard Gere and looks
to reach $153M in domestic ticket sales. Roberts broke the opening weekend
record for romantic comedies with the $27.7M holiday debut of Hill
only to shatter that benchmark with Bride's
$35.1M premiere two months later. These films proved that Julia, in the
right movie with the proper studio backing, can conquer all. Notting
Hill has already passed its domestic gross in offshore markets
and Bride has just begun seeing explosive
openings in its first overseas ventures. Put them together and Notting
Hill and Runaway Bride could
conceivably gross over $600M at the worldwide box office - and that's before
the additional revenue from home video, television, and soundtrack sales.
That sound you hear is the sound of the pretty woman's agents demanding
$20M+ for their client's next project.

The summer gone by was also a banner year for new filmmakers. Young
men we had never heard of before offered us fresh new stories that relieved
us from a string of glitzy and expensive remakes, and were rewarded by
becoming some of the summer's most profitble films. Eduardo Sanchez and
Daniel Myrick wrote, directed, and edited The
Blair Witch Project which was shot on a microbudget of about
$60,000 and will end up grossing about $141M domestically. Universal won
big with American Pie, written and
directed by Chris and Paul Weitz, which took its $11M production cost and
found a huge group of fans that will end up spending over $100M at the
domestic box office on the teen sex comedy. Finally, writer/director M.
Night Shyamalan is watching his number one movie The
Sixth Sense race towards the $200M hurdle. The $55M thriller
should easily top $500M at the worldwide box office. Kudos (and mountains
of cash) to Artisan, Universal, and Buena Vista for believing in these
formerly unknown filmmakers who have captured the imaginations of moviegoers
with their fresh new stories.

Family films were big hits this summer, but only if they had the Disney
logo attached. The studio's recommended diet for kids on summer vacation
is to feed them a new animated event film in mid-June followed by a live-action
remake a month later. This year's tag team of Tarzan
and Inspector Gadget will end up grossing
a combined $268M beating out last year's Mulan/The
Parent Trap combo ($187M) and 1997's pair of Hercules
and George of the Jungle which brought
in $204M. Other studios tried and failed in the family arena. Sony's Muppets
From Space, Warner Bros. The Iron Giant,
and Universal's Dudley Do-Right all
disappointed and just could not excite enough people into spending their
time and money. Dergarabedian put it simply that "Disney's brand name
speaks for itself."

Looking at studio performance, Buena Vista was tops among distributors
with six summer titles that will end up grossing a combined $565M+ by the
end of their domestic runs. The sleeper smash The
Sixth Sense is still going strong into the fall season and could
go higher than $255M. Meanwhile jungle fever hit the animation division
once again as Tarzan became Disney's
biggest summer toon since The Lion King.
Even the poorly-reviewed Inspector Gadget
was a big success and should reach a healthy $97M. "Gadget
and Sense were the two biggest surprises
for me. Sense doubled my wildest dreams."
exclaimed the studio's Chuck Viane.

Another studio that was all smiles this summer was Universal which saw
an amazing turnaround. Last summer it sat on the bench with only three
summer releases bringing in a weak total of $55M. This time Universal was
a major player and offered hits like The Mummy,
Notting Hill, and American
Pie which all will finish north of the $100M mark. The studio's
slate of six summer entries look to cume a muscular $480M. Paramount performed
well with four profitable hits including the star vehicles Runaway
Bride and The General's Daughter
(both co-financed by Buena Vista) as well as South
Park (handled overseas by Warner Bros.) and The
Wood, a film produced with MTV Films. The foursome should end
up grossing about $330M domestically.

Warner Bros., on the other hand, raced into the summer season fueled
by a hot spring but faced some disappointing performances from its Fourth
of July tentpole film Wild Wild West
and Stanley Kubrick's long-awaited Eyes
Wide Shut. Both movies opened at number one but suffered immediate
audience erosion as word-of-mouth kept potential dollars away. Warners
saw a respectable run from the action-horror entry Deep
Blue Sea, which is swimming towards $75M, but failed to attract
families to the superbly-reviewed animated film The
Iron Giant.

The remaining studios mostly relied on one big film to carry them through
the summer. Fox had the granddaddy of them all, The
Phantom Menace, while New Line hit gold with the Austin
Powers sequel. DreamWorks only had The
Haunting to boast about even though the suspense thriller will
claim the dubious distinction of having the largest opening weekend ($33.4M)
for a film that failed to reach $100M. Sony had a number of flops like
The Thirteenth Floor, Dick,
and Universal Soldier: The Return but
scored one major victory with the Adam Sandler comedy Big
Daddy which is set to finish with around $164M.

In the specialized arena, arthouses had their share of hits and gave
ticket buyers some alternatives to a summer full of Jar Jar, Mini-Me, and
Julia. The Blair Witch Project began
as a buzzworthy independent film but quickly joined the ranks of the blockbuster
club. Instead, moviegoers flocked to see Rupert Everett in An
Ideal Husband which has collected over $18M for Miramax, Cher
in Tea With Mussolini ($14.1M in under
300 sites), and Lions Gate's The Red Violin
which has brought in $9.3M from less than 300 theaters. Other success stories
include the German hit Run Lola Run,
distributed by Sony Classics, which has accelerated past the $6M mark in
under 125 venues, and Artisan's music documentary Buena
Vista Social Club which boasts a platinum-selling soundtrack
and has displayed remarkable legs pulling in $5M in less than 70 theaters.
Jack Foley of USA Films noted that "babyboomer adults just kept going
to the arthouses and found these pictures one after the other. The legginess
of some of these babyboomer pics has to be one of the more significant
attributes of this summer."